I was able to vote for the first time in 1968.
I was days away from becoming a Second Lieutenant in USAF.
I voted for Lyndon Johnson.
I guess I was pretty much a Democrat.
I was a sort of distillation of what happens when a couple of families of educated but not rich people - second generation Americans - have children and the children have children (that would be me) and they all had benefited from what FDR did - he was a Democrat - and nobody could figure out what would make anybody vote for Dewey.
I voted for Humphrey.
I voted for McGovern.
I voted for Ford.
Horrors.
Ford was a Republican.
Yeah, and I thought Carter was an idiot.
I was wrong about that, but Ford was a decent American and he did the right thing when he pardoned Nixon.
We didn't need any more of Nixon.
I was pretty sure.
Then I voted for Reagan.
And then again in 1984.
Then I voted for Bush - Reagan had made the world work again; I hoped that Bush could make America work again.
He didn't.
I voted for Perot in 1992.
And Dole in 1996.
But W was a vote too far.
I voted for Gore in 2000.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court preferred Bush.
I could go on but I won't; you can see the pattern.
There are Americans, lots of them, that will do their best to stamp out a fire created by faux leaders.
The world heard a lot of stamping last night.
